The next instant he walked boldly up to the clock and bent his ear to it. No, he could hear nothing. It had stopped. He glared steadily at the hands for two minutes by his own watch; they did not move.
In the back of his head, in the small of his back, in his legs, little tracts of his epidermis tickled momentarily. He wiped his face, and walked boldly away from the clock to the portière, which he lifted with one arm. Then he threw the light of his lamp direct on the dial, and glared at it again, fearful lest it should have taken advantage of his departure to resume its measuring of eternity.
Could a clock go for four months? A clock could be made that would go for four months. But this was not a freak-clock. It was a large Louis Seize pendule, and he knew it to be genuine of his own knowledge; he had bought it.
He dropped the portière between himself and the clock, and stood in the inner hall. He had had as much of the drawing-room as was good for his nerves.
The inner hall was oblong in shape, and measured about twelve feet at its greatest width. In front of him, as he stood with his back to the drawing-room, was a closed door, which he knew led into the principal bedroom of the flat. To his right another heavy portière divided the inner from the outer hall. This portière hung in straight perpendicular folds. He wondered why the portières had not been taken down and folded away.
He decided to penetrate first into the bedroom, partly because he deemed the bedroom might contain the solution of the enigma, and partly because his eye had fancied it saw a slight tremor in the portière leading to the outer hall. So he stepped stoutly across the space which separated him from the bedroom door. But he had not reached the door before there was a loud, sharp explosion, and a panel of the door splintered and showed a hole, and he thought he heard a faint cry.
A revolver shot!
He did not believe in anything so far-fetched as man-traps and spring-guns. Hence there must be some person or persons in the flat. Some unseen intelligence was following him. Some mysterious will had ordained that he should not enter that bedroom. The shot was a warning. He guessed from the flight of the splinters and the appearance of the hole that the mysterious will must be on the other side of the portière, but the portière gave no sign.
What was he to do? He had brought with him no weapon. He had not anticipated that revolvers would be needed in the exploration of an empty and forbidden flat. The very definite terrors of the inner hall seemed to him to surpass the vaguer terrors of the drawing-room, and he decided to return thither in order to consider quietly what his tactics should be; if necessary, he could return to the dome for arms and assistance. But no sooner did he move a foot towards the drawing-room than another shot sounded. The drawing-room portière trembled, and something crashed within the apartment. The mysterious will had ardently decided that he should go neither back nor forward.
'Who's there? Who's that shooting?' he muttered thickly, and extinguished his lamp.